The Sequester’s Unkindest Cuts

The White House has a messaging problem. As the deadline for the sequester—and cuts that will, over the long term, do very real damage to the economy and to many Americans who either work for the government or depend upon its help in some way—approached, the Administration spun a tale of impending and immediate disaster. Now that the sequester has taken effect, many of those gloomy promises have not come true, or they have been debunked altogether, leading some Democrats to publicly fret about the Administration overplaying its hand and forcing itself into a weaker negotiating position.

There is one area where the White House has the power to mold reality to conform to its message, though: inside the White House itself. So it seems like no coincidence that on Tuesday, members of Congress received an e-mail informing them that White House tours are being cancelled as of this coming Saturday, a victim of the sequester.

There are, of course, legitimate reasons for the White House to cancel tours as it slashes its budget—the tours are hardly a matter of national security, and far better to disappoint some tourists than furlough some hard-working people. A Secret Service spokesman said on Tuesday that the tours were cancelled so that the agency’s officers who would normally be present can be assigned elsewhere in the building, which will allow for a money-saving cut to overtime hours.

There are, however, also legitimate reasons to suspect that the move was less about cost-cutting than it was about political strategy. (It would be helpful to know how much money the move is expected to save, and how reducing overtime will impact the affected employees’ paychecks compared to a straight furlough, but Washington essentially shut down on Wednesday due to a snowstorm that never quite materialized, and no one was available at the Secret Service’s press office.) Tours are arranged through Congressional offices, so now members have to explain to their constituents why their kids don’t get to see where the President lives after all. And the White House knows very well the value of the tours, or, very least, it did back when Rahm Emanuel was running things. In 2009, writing for the Times Magazine, Matt Bai reported:

The second tenet of Emanuel’s theory is that the White House itself comes with strategic assets you can put to good use, if you allocate them properly. There’s the White House theater, where guests can watch movies and sporting events; formal state dinners; smaller gatherings in the first family’s residence, which spouses can join; tickets to the Easter-egg roll for kids; tickets to the White House tours that members like to give out to their constituents. These prizes are not handed out randomly or, as in the Bush White House, doled out mostly as rewards to allies who’ve demonstrated the requisite loyalty. Rather, in Obama’s nascent administration, they are considered carefully and accounted for obsessively.

If this is indeed the gamesmanship it appears to be, then, well, one such turn deserves another, right? Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, has introduced a measure that would, if passed, cut off all funding for transporting President Obama to and from the golf course as long as the tours remain shut down. Since Obama travels with a huge entourage of federal employees and is of course protected by the Secret Service everywhere he goes, the effect would be to prevent him from golfing at all.

Gohmert is a grandstander. He’s famous for, among other things, warning about “terror babies”; signing on to birther legislation; and casting the lone vote against a bill to remove the word “lunatic” from federal law because, he said, “not only should we not eliminate the word ‘lunatic’ from federal law when the most pressing issue of the day is saving our country from bankruptcy, we should use the word to describe the people who want to continue with business as usual in Washington.” In this case, the President’s golf game has little real impact but it quite effectively riles up conservatives, and Gohmert submitted his proposal as an amendment to a continuing resolution to fund the government. The House leadership was not allowing any amendments to the C.R. to be considered, so there was quite literally no chance that it could pass.

But, in this case, Gohmert was just giving the White House a taste of its own demagoguery. So it’s hard not to appreciate what he did—or, even, depending on your perspective, to love it a little. It could be an opportunity for the White House to start adhering to a new, better standard when it comes to the sequester fight: if you’re operating at Louie Gohmert’s level, try harder.

Official White House photograph by Pete Souza.

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